


Breakin' At The Cracks

by mydogwatson



Series: WHILE THE MUSIC LASTS [3]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Grief, M/M, Post Reichenbach, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-18
Updated: 2013-09-18
Packaged: 2017-12-26 23:44:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,016
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/971693
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mydogwatson/pseuds/mydogwatson
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A lonely, rainy night in London.  Tesco's can be a sad place.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Breakin' At The Cracks

**Author's Note:**

> I goofed yesterday and the story Die Alone was not posted as part 3 of my While the Music Lasts series. Should have been. So this is actually part 4. Still don't have all the kinks worked out. [These are not the good kind of kinks...]

I think you took my heart away when you  
said you’re leaving…I’m breaking at the  
cracks and everything goes black.  
It’s another heart attack and I can’t  
handle that.  
Love, I need you back.  
-Colbie Caillat

No one knew about his nocturnal excursions.  
Mrs. Hudson, despite all her hovering, still used her herbal remedies, which meant that she slept very deeply. Also, she had once been so accustomed to middle-of-the night departures and arrivals that it was easy for her unconscious to ignore them.  
Once away from the confines of 221B, he had learned very well how to avoid Mycroft’s damned cameras, so no one tracked his wanderings.  
Beyond the landlady and the British government, no one else cared enough to even suspect that one pathetic figure was roaming London in the darkest hours, making what was in reality a pilgrimage of selected holy sites. The places that marked out his life as the special thing it had once been.  
During the daylight hours he could still pass as the person he had been. He drank the tea and ate the scones Mrs. Hudson periodically delivered, listening as she chattered on. He went to work when they called him in and did the job as efficiently as always. If there was something slightly…not right about him that was only to be expected after everything that had happened, so no one seemed very bothered.  
The specific route of his walks varied according to his mood.  
Some nights he began by sneaking into the lab at Barts and remembering that first meeting. Even in that brief time, he had known that something very special was happening. A new life seemed so possible, even if he hadn’t really understood the wink. Still didn’t, really.  
While in the lab, he was always very careful not to think of their final meeting there. The one time he did carelessly remember the words that had been said, the lies that had been told, he barely made it to the loo before throwing up.  
Sometimes in the middle of the night he stood outside Angelo’s and stared into the closed café, looking at the table where they had waited for a killer to appear. This was the place where the elaborate choreography between them began. The dance that had never really been finished and which now never would be.  
There were so many places that made up this sentimental Stations of the Cross. Roland Kerr College. Shad Sanderson. Buckingham-bloody-Palace. The Antiquities Museum. The entirety of London was his scrapbook and every page he turned caused him to remember and mourn all over again.  
Occasionally, he even went to the 24-hour Tesco and walked the aisles, remembering the very few times they had been there together.  
Finally, sometime before dawn, he would wend his slow way back to Baker Street. There, he would stretch out on the battered sofa and try to sleep without nightmares. Much more often than he should have done, he would still take out his phone and send a text that was never replied to. That was never going to be replied to, he knew.  
There was no way of knowing how many times he’d replayed their final conversation in his mind. What should he have said? If he’d somehow managed to find the right words, would it have made a difference? He would give anything, everything, to know what words would have changed what happened.  
And finally the dawn would come. He might sleep a little. Maybe the phone would ring with the news that there was work for him to do. He would work and pretend that everything was normal and one more day would be gone.  
One day gone and how many left to go?  
He didn’t know how much longer he could go on like this, honestly. Was there even any point in trying?

It was a rainy cold night and so he cut his walk short. A brief visit to Barts, a peek into a darkened Angelo’s, and a stroll through the biscuit aisle at Tesco’s. Then, chilled and damp, he decided to go home.  
He trudged up the stairs and went into the flat. It wasn’t until he’d hung his coat on the hook and toed off his wet shoes that he realised there was someone else in the room.  
That someone else was a man he had never expected to see sitting in 221B again. As he stared, stunned, not really believing what he was seeing, wondering if he had at last lost his mind, their final conversation played in his head.

 

“How could you do that to me?”  
“It was…I thought it was the only way to keep you safe.”  
“You lied to me, Sherlock. You didn’t keep me safe. You ripped my heart out and left it on the pavement outside Barts. All those months and now you just...” John shook his head. “I can’t...I can’t even look at you.” There was a bitter irony in his voice as he said, “Goodbye, Sherlock.”  
“John, please…please…”  
But the door slammed and he was gone. Gone.

That had been three months ago. For the first couple of weeks, Sherlock tried. He sent hundreds of texts. He sent emails. He wrote a letter that was returned as Undeliverable. Finally he accepted that John was gone forever. Probably it was a just punishment for what he had done. But it was hard. It was so hard.  
But now here John was. Sitting in their flat and watching Sherlock.  
Sherlock walked over to the sofa slowly, on legs that trembled, and sank down next to the other man, “John,” he whispered. “You’re here.”  
“I am,” John agreed.  
“Why?” That was not really what he had intended to say.  
John sighed. “Because there is no place else I want to be.”  
They looked at one another for a long moment.  
“No place else I can stand to be,” John added eventually. “Except with you.”  
And Sherlock Holmes began to breathe again as he felt the broken places inside start to heal.

 

fini


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